It is now Daylight Saving Time and I have managed to waste the first hour of extra daylight by sleeping through it. I had a headache and decided to take a brief power nap and next thing I knew, it was dark! I feel I should apologize, but I don't know to whom. All those people turned their clocks back an hour so I could experience the miracle of being fooled into thinking I was watching the sun set an entire hour later than it did yesterday and I blew it! And, to top it all off, I still have the damned headache.

David Gergen frowned at the lather on his razorblade. He hopped down from his perch and began to search his trouser pockets hastily.

"Good grief," he cried thickly.

He came over to the gunrest and, thrusting a hand into Bert's upper pocket, said:

"Lend us a loan of your noserag to wipe my razor."

Bert suffered him to pull out and hold up on show by its corner a dirty crumpled handkerchief. David Gergen wiped the razorblade neatly. Then, gazing over the handkerchief, he said:

"The bard's noserag. A new art color for our Irish poets: snot green. You can almost taste it, can't you?"

He mounted to the parapet again and gazed out over Dublin bay, his fair oakpale hair stirring slightly.

"God," he said quietly. Isn't the sea what Algy calls it: a grey sweet mother? The snot green sea. The scrotum tightening sea. Epi oinopa ponton. Ah, Convy, the Greeks. I must teach you. You must read them in the original. Thalatta! Thalatta! She is our great sweet mother. Come and look."

Bert stood up and went over to the parapet. Leaning on it he looked down on the water and on the mailboat clearing the harbor mouth of Kingstown.

"Our mighty mother," David Gergen said.

And you all know where this came from I reckon. Joyce could see a hundred years into the future and into Holy MOAB. A man of incredible vision for being as blind as he was. Hmmm....well yaz..., that's as astute as you'll ever find me. The tide's going out and my cone is deflatting considerbley.....

We are the onliest sane ones, Amos. I still habv my wits due to the cable being messed up and habv not watched the tube in three weeks. I am getting this wierd feeling like mebbe I don't need to know what the hell is going on everwhar at once!

Criminy -- we have a major asshole running the country, we are battling Shiites, Sunni, and other strange tribal clumps in hot battle, the nation dances on the bedside of vegetables, and we have a dearth of BS????? I don't THINK so!!

It has come to my alertness, given the present state of an inactive mind that pretends alertness, that everything is an=a energy particle of an inactive piece of cow turd. It really doesn't matter if the cow turd is black or white because generally it is brown, anyway. Now where was I?........ I think I was saying Bongo Players are affiliated with the repeating notion that the whiter shade of black can be glimpsed with a respect that all bongo players play with their drums better when the moon is at half phase than at no phase at all...

That type does. And decorator shapes, also. "Dung beetle sphere" is very popular. A well-shaped case-hardened ball of shit, taking it's shape from the joint activity of insect mandible manipulation and rolling for yards and yards until it can be shoved into the beetle's, er, um, hole. Nest. Something to do with the underground. Out of sight. I just realized I don't know where the beetle puts the darned ball of dung. Shit.

Baby shit is only cute to those who have never changed a diarrheal diaper. Kids should be required to shit nice firm little pellets like rabbits. (There's another omission from the BS list: "Bunny Shit".) Then instead of diapers they could just wear a little collection bag and you could dump it in the flowe bed at the end of the day.

It has occurred to me that throughout the history of the MOAB, we have equated the term "BS" with "Bull Shit". While there can be little doubt that the "S" does, indeed, represent "Shit", the "B" may, in fact, represent a number of shit-sources.

So, if you ever feel that your post doesn't quite measure up to "Bull Shit", please feel free to choose an appropriate "BS" from the following list:

What sort of place is this? Now I am experiencing a much warmer than normal metabolic temperature, my olfactory organ is secreting a greenish mucus, and my corporeal parts are aching. I am also forceably expelling air and mucus droplets in spasms of muscular contraction. There is also reverse peristalsis. My dendrial mycotes are drooping!

I'm so glad that I can pass along some wonderful news regarding improvements in a U.S. library, and hope the progress will spread. Rapaire, be sure to note the coffee bar expansion story. I think we'll go ahead with that one at my university library. This is the kind of stuff that makes the MOAB so great!

Give it up, Amos. Let it go. You'll be better for it. Tomorrow is another day. When one window closes another opens. Let the dead past bury its dead. Remember to put the seat down. Look both ways before crossing. Don't play in traffic. Stop, drop, and roll. Never run with scissors. Wear your rubbers.

And you will of course be there, to help them!! What better job could there be than to provide help to an endless line of slavering ineptitude, woebegone catastrophes in shoes, accidents that stopped waiting to happen, dumbkopfs disguised as staff members, users of many substances, the lost, bewildered and confused, the unable and the staggering many? Broad shoulders indeed, for such an Augean task!! All praise to thee, helper of many a fool!!

I -- on the other hand -- help no-one, earn no pay, and produce nothing! I do cook hamburgers for my bride when she comes home from the office, though.1

Yet, I strive to find some role where I will be as burdened with responsibility as you are. Why is this??? **bg**

would that I were kidding, Amos. The dastard actually has done this! (posted the stuff - the voice recognition bit is of course BS - in honour of the day. But the bloody idjits trying to use it will call the helpdesk!!!!!)

"i have to be very careful what i say or i could accidentlly DELETE this very important FILE"???

And what does the software do to cope with dialects? And aren't secretaries there to type up stuff, not just read it into a machine? Why can't the higher-ups read their own stuff into the machine and let the secretaries get on with important work, like keeping the butts of the higher-ups out of jail?

[whinge mode ON] This would be funny if I weren't manning the help-desk.

One of the supervisors has posted two pages of instructions over the shared document processing center - regarding the new voice recognition software installed so that the secretaries can use voice commands to process their documents.

Diabolically he has included "passwords" and "code words" and the comments that it may take the voice recognition software a few attempts to recognize new voices or voices after a change in personnel.

* Little Cappy Jenks was just 3 years old when he toddled into the living room of his middle-class suburban home in a middle-class suburb of Nagodaches. His father was drinking beer with two friends and his brother-in-law; poor Cappy was struck by the flying BS. He's now a best-selling author.

* Laura was a cute kid: perky, pretty, smart, and always ready to help. One day she encountered a pervert and was taught to read; she was hooked and now she's given her body to a Major Politician and is living a degraded and disgusting existence in Washington, DC.

These are only two from the thousand in our files.

Unsafe BS practices cost the world billions each year:

* In 2003, Turkey spent over 3,000,000,000 Turkish Lira on BS-related diseases, money that could have been better spent on small arms.

* During 2004 -- just last year! -- the United Kingdom and the United States spent uncounted billions just for "Prime" ministers and "Chief Executives."

* From 1990 to 1999, the Southern Hemisphere alone did NO research on the dangers of BS, doubling that done by the Northern Hemisphere.

Won't you help? Send your contribution to Layah, and I beg you, PLEASE follow these simple rules of Safe BS:

1. Always use a condom. 2. Treat every BS as if it were loaded until you personally have proven otherwise. 3. Keep BS chained up when it's not in use. 4. Put "Mr. Yuck" stickers on EVERYTHING. 5. Remember, you can never tell! 6. Walk your post in a military manner, keeping always on the alert and allowing no one to pass without proper authority. 7. Read everything! 8. Wash your hands for at least 20 seconds after going to the bathroom. 9. Thou shalt not commit. 10. Memorize all the unwritten rules.

If you will follow these simple, common-sense, rules we can beat this thing -- together!

If google's read our verse and is still giving us poetry competitions I'll be very dissapointed. I thought Google ads were more intelligent than that.

Accidental BS kills thousands of people a year. It's not something to be taken lightly, and I certainly wouldn't go making jokes about it. It's a serious matter, and one that isn't talked about often enough. Accidental BS is a serious problem in this country, and yet not many people acknowledge it, much less actually try to stop it's spread. That's why I'm starting the save the BS campaign. What can you do to help? You can start up a campaign in your own neighborhood. Or better yet just send me a check, and your conscience can be clear that you've done what you could to stop this horrendous massacre.

We are, in fact, being extremely polite by not commenting upon your doggerel. You see, when one sets out to imitate shit, one cannot expect to receive lauds if one is successful. Shit's like that. No matter how successful you are at creating it, in the end you still have shit. It is testimony to the quality of the shit you have created that we have merely let it lie without comment instead of saying, "My God, Amos! It's shit!"

Every time I invent a new dead poet of mythically simpering style and colossal patsiness, it just gets ignored. These are some of the best poor poets you will see -- more subtle in their mediocrity than McGonagle, more flat-footed and brutish in the clinch than Edgar A. Guest. Yet not a word!! Why is this?

*puff puff*...just back from following Rapaire's instructions......You would not believe how narrow minded my neighbor are! Luckily, the cops didn't even believe them, and I was safely back in my house before they arrived.

I had to caution MMario about promoting our exemplary brand of BS over on some of those others lists. A considerable amount of the BS that is landing on those censorship lists is downright rancid. I've never found the true cow variety to be unpleasant.

Speak not to me of cow pats, now I pray, For on them there is little worth to say And cowpats, laud them how you may Never outgrow their origins and stay Where they are landed, caring not and without form; Listless and odiferous is the cow-pat norm.

Oh, no--enough of cowpats without cess! I'd rather spend my hours on B.S. Golden in variety and magic in its reach, Leave cowpats behind, smelling each to each, Go forth, mend up your manners and your dress, And give the world its worth in pure BS.